On a Postcard

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I’ve actually been trying to write something here for ages but thanks to me attempting to move to another server, you’ve not had anything to read.

It should have been easy. Export the database, load the software on the new host, import the database and start writing. The snag is that it wouldn’t let me configure all of the plugins (the bits of add-on software that give the blog it’s overall appearance and functions), it wouldn’t let me amend any previous entries and it wouldn’t let me add any new ones.

Why? Well, it seems that Wordpress changed how they handle character sets from a nice simple way that everyone could cope with to a really sophisticated one that nobody could.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Although there seem to be more SEO services on offer by the day, google’s pre-emptive action against sites accepting payment for links (although mainly aimed at low profile sites) seems to put in question the whole ethos of paying someone to promote your website.

Typically if you run a site that you’d like to be above average in terms of traffic, you’ll get involved in promoting it in some fashion. Obviously if you’re a large company then you may have lots of minions to do this for you but the majority of sites out there don’t have a large IT department behind them and therefore they look to firms offering SEO services such as submissions to directories. There’s nothing they do that you couldn’t do yourself but who’d have the time to be able to enter their site on 900 directories? Instead chances are that you’ll pay the $100 or so to someone who’ll do it for you.

Yet, that’s buying links isn’t it? Well, apparently not in google’s eyes. Buying links in directories doesn’t count as buying links apparently unless the directory is charging too much (that amount being arbitarily determined by google). So the $300 that yahoo charge doesn’t count as too much but the $50 that a small-scale directory charges could well do. Of course, you’ll not know if the directory you’re submitting falls under the too much banner because google won’t tell you.

So I wonder if it’s really worth the time and effort to promote my sites these days.

Aside from the possibility of google arbitrarily pulling the rug from under you and negating all your efforts, I find that the traffic on my sites is tootling along at around triple the traffic from the year before and has been since I started collecting statistics.

Would it still triple if I did nothing at all to promote the sites each year? Emmm, well, probably in that sites I’ve not promoted also seem to triple their traffic year on year but I’m just too chicken to not promote a major site.

Popularity: 2% [?]